Where Twisting Roads Lead

As if by Universal design, our Autumn journeys turn inward.

Traveling along quiet blue highways in a newborn Fall, the early-morning frost on the windshield and passenger window offered me a gauzy veil through which to make photographs that represent these inner journeys: scenes which leave more to the imagination than the blazingly overt images of the season just passed.

What first appear as planes of color, upon closer look reveal familiar shapes, and perhaps recognizable forms. Our eyes multi-task between the abstract and reality.

And so, our curiosity is free to move beyond passive observer and emerge as story teller -- or story finisher.

"Autumn," observes my friend and teacher Marv Hiles, "is the Tao of Seasons, a time to release everything."

Where Twisting Roads Lead

Traveling in a car on back roads one Autumn morning, I decided to shoot images through the undefrosted window. What emerged was quite another perspective of the New England countryside.

Green Valley

Where Twisting Roads Lead

Had I wiped away the condensation, the images would certainly have been more recognizable and even a bit redundant as simply familiar picture postcards of autumnal vistas we've seen countless times.

Clearing

Where Twisting Roads Lead

In the abstraction I discovered a different journey, one that passed through an inner landscape.

Road Work Ahead

Where Twisting Roads Lead

“As Autumn deepens,” writes the philosopher Marv Hiles, “the sky opens out, the canvas of our imagination spreads, and we are left to wander back over our lives. Autumn is the Tao of seasons: a time to release everything.”

Even the perceived view as we follow twisting roads.

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